Monark Review – School Is Now In Session

Monark had a release trailer that introduced a lot of interest in this game. It showed Daemons going after the main character and a lot more horror aspects to an otherwise normal JRPG type game. The real kicker was when the developers were shown on screen and we got to see that it was some of the ex-developers of Atlus who had various Shin Megami Tensei games under their belt. How was this game and did it do enough to separate itself from what many see as a clone of the Persona series? 

Game Name: Monark
Platform(s): PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, PC
Publisher(s): NIS America
Developer(s): FuRyu
Release Date: February 22nd, 2022
Price: $59.99

You start out the game waking up to your sister shaking you awake in the middle of an academy hallway. Turns out a huge barrier has encompassed this academy as a maddening mist has made its way into a variety of the buildings inside the campus grounds. As you are running away from the hallway in the mist, your phone goes off and you answer it. The phone call teleports you to the Otherworld. The Otherworld is a world filled with Daemons trying to attack anyone who enters from the other side. Due to the emergency, you make a pact with a Daemon called a Monark that gives you the power to fulfill your desire. When you defeat the Daemons and return back to the normal world, you begin your mission to rid the Academy grounds of the mist by defeating all of the Pactbearers. Pactbearers are the individuals who have made pacts with other Monarks all around the academy grounds. There is one for each of the deadly seven sins. With each Pactbearer you defeat, you get new information about the academy and how the barrier came to appear. 

Honestly, this game has a pretty basic premise when you cut it down to its core, but outside of that, the story is extremely detailed and has a lot of lore you can find all over the academy. My favorite thing in this game were the characters and the story of the game itself. Each character has a classic character trope but is far more than that. Each character have very intensive backstories that help explain their personalities and characterizations. Each story element is separated into multiple acts with each individual companion character. This option I originally thought was going to just be reskins of the same kind of element of the story, but I was super wrong. Each act is heavily focused on the character you choose to be friends with at the time. You get a deep dive into their story, personality, and their struggles. When I thought I had an idea of who they were and why, the game throws you for a loop by introducing another large chunk of their character that makes them even more personal.

Tactical Maneuverability 

The game mainly consists of two parts. You have to go into the mist to find phones in order to enter that spot of the Otherworld in order to shatter an ideal of a Pactbearer. Along the way into the mist, you may get blocked by the unsettled students who will want a varying degree of information. That information can be found somewhere in the mist or in the student’s computer directory. This usually is resolved from deducing information that you can find in the mist or in the student’s profile. They turn into logic puzzles having to figure out the specific information. An important note to this, there is important information all around you in the notes you find around the academy. They can help you deduce the mind games and when you have a lot of the notes written in your library page, it makes puzzles a whole lot easier. Once you have found the answer and have unbarred the way to the phones, then you get to the difficult but satisfying part of this game. The combat. 

This is a turn-based tactical RPG. Think of Disgaea meets Hyperdimension Neptunia. You start off in a unique map filled with Daemons and maybe a boss character or two. You take yourself, a companion character and a number of Daemons that you control that fill your side of the map. Where you place your units during combat is important. If you get too close to the enemy they can utilize your placement to their advantage by using back attacks or special abilities. I would recommend taking it slow and methodically defeating one to two enemies at a time. If you get taken over by a bunch of units at a time they will not let up. You can place your units close to enemies to give follow-up attacks once an attack is dealt from your side.

Attacking an enemy head-on gives them a chance to counterattack. If you attack them from the back, you deal increased damage and they will be unable to counter your attack.  Instead of MP you have a MAD gauge. When you use a special ability you increase your madness level. If you fully delve into the madness by reaching 100% on your MAD gauge you have a few turns as your character goes into a rage that also won’t let you control the character and they will then die if left unchecked after a few turns.

You can help remedy your MAD gauge by working on your Awake gauge. Performing normal actions increase it slightly, getting attacked also increases it slightly. You can also use a special move called resolve that will use up your action but increase your Awake gauge by a large portion. Once the Awake gauge is full, you enter a state called Awakened. This will allow you to use up any ability without increasing the mad gauge for a few turns. You can also use very potent special moves when you are awakened. Keeping these gauges in check is a big part of managing combat.

Your boss enemies can also be awakened and use special moves. Be careful about doing too many smaller damaging attacks so you don’t accidentally awaken them. Learned that the hard way. There are also weapon techniques that will cost you HP to use. If you use too many weapon techniques you might be in trouble during combat with a lucky critical strike from the enemy. Be sure to gauge your HP to damage trade-off and make sure you don’t use up too much of your HP.

If you do get into trouble in areas, make sure to grind your characters up. You share experience across your entire party called Spirit. You can invest Spirit points into your abilities that will also count as a level up. If you invest too much into one character you might find yourself in a tough situation where you can’t use your other characters as freely. You will need to keep them out of enemy range as lower levels can take a lot of damage from a single attack. I would try to keep my companion character and main character at the same level as the Daemon soldiers at about four to six levels less.

You can utilize the defer command to use up an ally’s action to give an extra movement and action to another character you control. This can be helpful for giving your higher-level units more actions and movement. Be cautious as using defer too much will increase that character’s Mad gauge by a large portion. At the end of combat, you will get to a screen that ranks how well you did depending on how fast you defeated all the enemies, how many times you got assist attacks in, how often you used defer, and how many times your units died. Depending on how well you do will add a multiplier to the amount of Spirit points you get at the end. If you are grinding, getting a good rank will help reduce the number of maps you will need to complete.

Aesthetically Pleasing 

You may have noticed this game is going to go on the Nintendo Switch and the PS5. This means that it could be a large difference in quality in the graphics department. This however is a very stylized game. It isn’t anything groundbreaking nor is it going to shake your core due to its beauty. The cinematics are gorgeous but the in-game engine graphics are average. It has a stylistic approach however with lighting, movement, and with fog effects. This game has a horror-esque vibe to it all. The graphics in this game emphasize that vibe the whole way. It has creepy skeleton soldiers, blood-marked school buildings, hidden mist areas, and even dark abandoned hallways that can give you a scare if you aren’t paying attention to your surroundings. This isn’t a full horror game, so you don’t have to worry about jump scares.

The layout of the game in small hallways, slow movements, and the added sound effects for footsteps all give you a sense of foreboding doom in every new area you unlock. In some areas, you might find students trapped behind doors or obstacles who are knocking trying to get out. This entire game is very focused on what it wants aesthetically and I really appreciate it! It may not be the beautiful CG in-game engine that Tales of Arise gave us, or the expressive Kingdom Hearts 3 graphics but overall this game is not a bad looker. Since it is all about the aesthetics and not about its power, you will get a very similar experience on both Nintendo Switch and on PS5. 

Sound  

The soundtrack of this game is something else. Every story encounter has a separate song going on with the battle music. It is pure joy to listen to. It accentuates the mood of the conflict extremely well. This entire game is positioned to give you the experience it wants to give you and this music is in that exact same avenue. You experience enhanced knocking effects in the mist that echo as you are walking in it. The footsteps along with seeing the students who are unsettled and having mind breakdowns in the new areas you unlock can cause you to increase your Mad gauge in the walking segments.

You don’t get to run in this game, it is slight jogging or walking. It may not add a lot in terms of the gameplay or aesthetics but the sound of the jogging and knowing you can move only so fast gives you more time to experience the mood of each new area, the music, and your own footsteps slowly prodding on the ground. Even songs that are incredibly engaging and have a small sense of foreboding doom in either the bass or smaller sections of the song and it keeps you in the knowledge of the game you are playing. 

The Take Away

I absolutely loved my time in Monark. My one issue I had was I would get stuck on a logic puzzle by thinking too deeply into the actual puzzle itself. Heck for one of the logic puzzles I legit had to almost teach myself Morse code to then realize that was not correct. Some things you need to keep in mind is that some hints you find in earlier areas, may actually be a hint for another area of the game. I went all around various classrooms of a building to realize the hint I needed was in a separate location entirely that I found earlier. Write down all the important notes and memos you find and where they are located. It will help you a lot.

Also, this is a long game with a ton of substance to it. Don’t rush it. Let yourself enjoy and feel the dread. I am at the 60-hour mark and only have unlocked two of the five endings. Also note that if you try to rush things, you may miss a vital piece of information somewhere in the academy that will block you from story progression further down the road. The mechanics and the difficulty are extremely solid. Anyone who wants a tough game that gives you satisfaction from beating bosses, this is the game for you. Anyone who wants a solid story and to love the characters in this game, turn on casual mode. This game has it all! 

Review Disclosure Statement: Monark was provided to us by NIS America Inc. for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please go review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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Monark will be released on February 22nd, 2022 on PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. It currently has a demo out for consoles, that you can check out before you purchase the full game.